


Blowing Off Steam

by Zoadgo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AP Student Clarke, Canon Alcoholism Mention, Delinquent Murphy, F/M, High School AU, Rebelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 09:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2726789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murphy never thought he'd see the day when an AP student would join him on a smoke break. And he absolutely did not expect Clarke Griffin, star student among the star students. But teasing her is fun, and he finds out that her nicotine addiction is simply a way of de-stressing by breaking rules. Well, there's nothing wrong with helping her blow off a little steam, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blowing Off Steam

**Author's Note:**

> Murphy's mom is an alcoholic, so there's is mention of alcohol abuse, jsyk.

Murphy loves smoking. Not the smell of cigarettes, or the way the caustic air poisons his lungs, or the shortened life expectancy. Actually, he hates smoking. It would be more accurate to say that he likes smoke breaks. Slipping out of school, doing something he’s very definitely not supposed to do. The feel of the cold autumn air on his face in sharp contrast to the burning ember drawing ever closer to his lips with each poisoned drag makes him damn near poetic.

Usually there’s at least a few useless bums that he calls “friend” hanging around in the unofficial smoke pit, provided to them by the school inasmuch as the teachers don’t give them lectures as long as they light up on the right side of the fence. Today, however, Murphy finds himself alone. He doesn’t mind, actually prefers it. Chatting idly about vaguely vulgar and violent acts is good fun every once in a while, but he does enjoy some time by himself on occasion. Lord knows he can never get away from prying eyes and accusations at home.

He has exams to thank for his solitude.The only classes that aren’t taking exams are the AP courses, and Murphy would just about die laughing if he saw one of the nerd royalty stroll out to his little patch of trampled grass and packed dirt. There’s no way anyone else will be done with their exam for at least another twenty minutes. What can he say, Murphy has a knack for English.

“Fuck.” Murphy curses softly under his breath, stamping his feet to get blood flowing in them. He’s unfortunately stuck out in the unseasonably cold air for a while longer. The mall just across the street kicks out kids during exam week until 3pm, and any teacher catching him in the halls would just send him straight back to class to spend the remaining hour of exam time in complete and utter boredom. He could go home, but… A glance at his watch shows 2:10, which means his mom would be just starting in on her first bottle of Silent Sam, still hungover. No, home’s not an option until there’s a strong chance of her being unconscious on the dingy couch.

“Shit.” It takes Murphy a depressingly long time to realize that he’s not the one who swore this time. It only takes a second or two before he turns around, but really he should have noticed the other person as soon as they walked up. He must have been too lost in thought.

Murphy’s expecting maybe an embarrassed teacher hoping to grab a quick smoke under the guise of “coffee”, but he ends up facing a girl his age. Blonde hair pulled into a style that’s moderately fashionable and moderately functional frames an amusingly red face that Murphy vaguely recalls seeing around school. He takes in dark blue skinny jeans and a tailored black jacket that shows off her curves quite nicely before he manages to place her, and snorts in amusement.

“Um, I was just running to the mall for…” Murphy cocks an eyebrow at her. He may not be smart, but he’s not that stupid. The girl seems to get over her initial embarrassment quite quickly, and she drops the innocent look into something colder and harder. And way more attractive, at least to Murphy. What can he say, he likes scary girls. “You know what? Fuck it. I’m coming out to grab a smoke when I thought there would be no one else out here. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Not at all.” Murphy quirks the corner of his mouth in a grin and mockingly bows, sweeping his arm to the side in a grand gesture of presenting the barren field to her. “My kingdom is open to you, your highness.”

“Great, sarcasm. How refreshing.” Murphy just grins more and holds his lighter out as she fishes for a smoke, which she lights on her own while glaring out his outstretched hand. Murphy just shrugs and puts his lighter back in his pocket, smile still on his face as he takes a long drag.

For a few moments they just stand in silence. It’s obvious that the girl - Murphy can’t quite remember her name, but she’s one of the AP nerds - is pretty uncomfortable with him watching her as she engages in what is probably an extremely guilty pleasure, but he can see the tension drain from her as her cigarette burns down slowly and Murphy doesn’t comment on anything. He waits until she seems almost relaxed before piping up, eyes locked on the rippling grey clouds stretched across the sky,

“So.” The girl jumps slightly as his voice breaks the quiet. “What’s your name?”

“Really. That’s what you want to know.” Her deadpan stare and intonation makes them more statements than questions, so Murphy just shrugs with a smile. She sighs and draws once more on the cancerous smoke before answering him. “It’s Clarke.”

And then Murphy can actually place her, if only because her name is on every academic award in the hallway where the security camera is busted and you won’t get written up for a bit of roughhousing. And on a fair few of the art displays in the hallway, if he recalls correctly. Of course she has to do everything, that’s just the way those academically gifted students seem to be.

“Clarke Griffin, yeah?” She inclines her head slightly in his peripheral vision, and Murphy stamps out the last ember into earth that will be frozen within the next few days. “So tell me, what’s a gifted student like yourself doing out in the smoke pit when you should be circle-jerking with the rest of your nerd friends about how much better you are than the rest of us?”

She snorts and scuffs her own butt into the dirt, wasting significantly more of the cigarette than he did. Murphy guesses she can afford more, although he’s not quite sure how she’s getting them. She doesn’t seem the sort to have the same shady friends as Murphy does. “You really think we’re just naturally better at this shit?” Murphy nods a little and she shakes her head slightly with a look of complete confusion. “What the- No. Okay? Just no. We work our asses off. It’s stressful, but it’s worth it for our futures. You know, that thing you’re throwing away every day that you steal chocolate bars from the dollar store and get drunk with your friends.”

“Ah, the self-righteous “wasted opportunity” rant. I’m more used to hearing that from teachers, but to each their own I suppose.” He doesn’t reject the comment about drinking like he vehemently wants to. She probably wouldn’t believe him, and what would it accomplish anyway. 

“It’s not self-righteous. How can you be so… content with wasting your time?” Murphy just shrugs, wondering why there appears to be genuine concern on her face and why he cares enough to notice it. He takes a step back and stuffs his hands in his pockets, hunching over slightly.

“Right now it seems like you’re wasting time just as much as I am.” He doesn’t try to explain that he doesn’t have a future to throw away. He couldn’t go to college even if he cared enough to get his grades up. She’d probably give him the same old tired speech about applying himself and scholarships, but it’s not that easy. When you live in fear of your house, crappy and infested with all manner of vermin as it is, nothing’s ever simple. “And you haven’t answered my question yet.”

“Why I’m out here should be pretty obvious. As I said, we work our asses off. We all have some way of blowing off steam, or some horrible side effect of not doing it.” She shrugs as if her breaking the law, even if under age smoking isn’t really something most people care about, is no big deal. Murphy finds himself enjoying learning about her, about the semi-risque life she leads to cope with the self-inflicted stress in her life.

“So you smoke to relax. Fair enough. Surely there are things that are less against the rules you could do, though.” A faint, sly smile creeps onto Clarke’s lips, as if she’s remembering some juicy secret, and Murphy is intrigued by it.

“It’s not about relaxing. Not for me, at least. I said blowing off steam, yeah? Well, breaking the rules is a great way to do that. Plus, the adrenaline rush of almost getting caught can make up for late nights of studying.” Murphy snorts and smiles, wondering what other things she does to blow off steam. And then he has a terrible idea as he sees the challenging look on her face, as if she’s daring him to say that she shouldn’t be doing what she does.

“So it’s all about doing things that people think you shouldn’t do, huh? Doing bad things?” Clarke nods firmly, and Murphy smiles as he takes a step closer, closing the small distance between them. He can hear Clarke inhale sharply as he brushes her hair back over her right shoulder with one hand. “Well I’m not one to brag, but I guarantee you I’m not one of the good guys.”

The wind that rustles the sparse grass is bitingly cold, but the air between Clarke and Murphy is charged with heat and electricity. His eyes track the movement of the tip of her tongue peeking out to trace over her bottom lip, and damn does he ever want to do that. But he’s not going to give her the satisfaction of kissing her. No, if she wants to use him to satisfy her urges to be wrong, he’s down with that. But she needs to make the first move.

And of course she does. Murphy gets the feeling from their brief interaction that Clarke is not the sort to back down from a challenge. And she rises to this one with her lips on his and her hands tangled in his hair. He’d been considering getting it cut, it was getting annoyingly long, but the way that Clarke insistently grabs at it to pull him closer as their lips move together disturbingly well makes him throw that idea right out the window. Murphy in turn pulls her flush with him, enjoying the softness and warmth of her body against his. It’s a long time in which Murphy for once isn’t worrying about anything, in which all he can think about is what he’s feeling, and the taste of smoke mingling on their tongues. Different brands, similar enough to meld into one but different enough that he could pick hers out when the last hints of it snuck into his mouth.

But then the moment ends, as everything does. Their breath forms clouds of smoke, this time just water vapour, as the rest their foreheads together. Murphy realizes that they’re still wrapped in each other’s arms, and the smile that crosses his lips is actually happy, not a cocky grin or a sly smirk. And god is it ever tempting to stay there, frozen in that dismal little smoke pit. But reality creeps back into Murphy’s mind, and he’s proud of himself for being the first to step away.

“Well, I’ll see you around.” He turns and trudges off to nowhere in particular, purposefully not hearing the confused little noise that Clarke makes when he lets her go. He definitely doesn’t listen closely over his own footsteps until he hears her turn and walk back to the school. And Murphy absolutely does not look over his shoulder to watch her walking away from him.

At that point, Murphy hates himself for being the first to step away.

**Author's Note:**

> Courtesy of a tumblr prompt *cough*fromthreemonthsago*cough* for a Clarphy Highschool AU! This is totally going to be multichapter, btw, just as the lovely [coldsaturn](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com) not so subtly hinted it should be while editing this. It will get angsty, but I promise no one dies in this one
> 
> Anyway, come chat with me [on tumblr!](http://jonnmurphy.tumblr.com) And thanks in advance for commenting/viewing/leaving kudos <3


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